We HaPPY feW
The Joy Took Club
released OUT NOW! Reviewed on PC Also on Ps4, Xbox One Publisher Gearbox Publishing
videogame At its best, We Happy Few offers a bizarre series of unlikely events. Unfortunately, what happens between those events is inescapably boring.
It’s set on a collection of British islands in an alternate history ’60s. The Allies lost WW2, but the residents of Wellington Wells avoided occupation by doing something bad that they don’t want to remember. This left them so traumatised that they started taking a mind-altering drug, Joy. Twenty years later, everyone’s still addicted.
It’s a depressing set-up, but this is a pretty place to be. When you take Joy, the streets burst into colour, with rainbows appearing in the sky and butterflies circling your feet. Even when you’re off the drug, the world oozes old-school style.
You control three characters, each with their own 10-hour story. Office worker Arthur is wracked with guilt about the fate of his younger brother, Sally is a drug dealer to the police force, and Scotsman Ollie lives in a tower, where he spends all his time speaking to his dead wife. Through their eyes, you find out more about what happened at the end of the war, while unpicking a conspiracy in the present day.
The variety of the scripted story missions keeps you on your toes, and there are some enjoyably wacky set-pieces – like riding down train tracks on a giant vacuum cleaner. But everything else is disappointingly dull. For every time you fill in for a male model on the catwalk, you’re sent to a distant waypoint to collect an item. For every time you don a rubber catsuit to infiltrate a kinky party, there’s a gang of goons to beat up. And quests are far too easy. You’re told exactly where to go, what to do, and who to talk to. Survival game elements also get in the way of the fun. You’ve got to forage for food, fill up canteens and sleep in beds, and finding the right ingredients can be a chore.
It’s great to look at, but not to play. If you like quirky settings it might be worth picking up just to peek at the world the developers have created. But if you’re hoping for more, you won’t find any Joy here. Samuel Horti
Might be worth picking up just to peek at the world
In Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Sorcerer, magic-dealer John Wellington Wells brews a love potion that affects a whole village.